Streamlining The Quote Process Can Boost Sales And Customer Relations

How often have you stared at your boots muttering to yourself as you’ve stood in line for half an hour at the builder’s merchants or found yourself waiting 20 minutes just to order a cup of coffee?

Whether you’re quoting for an entire extension, plastering of a single wall or the installation of a new bathroom, customers also value quick service and, they want to know how much it’s going to cost them as soon as possible.

Understanding Customer Frustrations

Google ‘how long should I wait for a quote’ and you’ll come across literally dozens and dozens of pages of results.

There are countless forum posts where homeowners recount their frustrations of calling in a plumber, or electrician, plasterer or builder for a quote, only to wait days or weeks for a price to be provided.

From a customer perspective, they’re eager to know how much it’s going to cost them to get the work done – and more than likely eager to get underway.

If you’ve been recommended to them, or are one of several local tradesmen that have been asked to quote for the job, waiting around for a price can feel like a complete waste of time.

However, if you have to travel to and from site, cost up materials, look at the job and then go and work up a quote, in between managing actual paying jobs and running your trades business, it can seem like a massive headache for a job that you might not even make that much profit on.

If you have relied on paper-based systems up to now or even, give verbal quotes that leave room for scope creep, it could well be time to consider how a jobbing software can save you time and help you to keep customers (and potential customers happier) with no extra effort on your part.

While there are lots of generic project management tools out there, a trades business serious about customer service and sales needs a specialist trades job management tool.

The award-winning ServiceM8 comes into its own here – once you’re trained on its correct use and have the support needed to get the most out of it, you could well find that your sales figures soar.

Customers love a fast quote because they know exactly what they’re getting and get the information at the exact moment when they have a strong desire to see the job done.

If you can give them your cost at the moment when they are most invested in the project, you’re more likely to win that business.

There are lots of ways to do this – and several which you can leave your job management software to handle for you.

That means less admin time for you, quicker job costs for clients, immediate payment options and a much stronger bottom line with, dare we say it, some clawed back free time too.

Putting Your Job Management Software To Work Winning Business And Closing Sales

If you pick the right job management software by following a careful process of assessing your processes and trialing with training, it is possible to use your app to seriously speed up your quote process:

Use it to host a 24/7 online booking system. This means once you have the basic rules set up (such as a fixed price per hour or type of job) your customers can book online around the clock with no input required from you at all. Given we live in an on-demand economy, this seriously strengthens your attractiveness to clients who want a job doing, and want the wheels in motion right now.

Once you have pre-set rules, the job management software becomes your intelligent assistant, with no supervision required. It will use answers to determine costs, as the customer fills in a pre-set form.

You can build deposits and pre-payments into the process, meaning once the client accepts the quote, they’re automatically taken to a new screen to input card details.

You can even call on your job management tool to help with smart scheduling. Because the system is entirely linked, it can look at staff schedules and present customers with options for when the work could take place.

From quoting to payment to scheduling in the work, all with no additional input required, professional trades business job management software can seriously streamline and speed up your entire quote process – and leave happy customers in your wake.